How you can donate your breast milk to help premature babies this Christmas.

The Dangers of Formula Milk

Did you know that 4,000 babies die every day around the world due to being fed artificial formula milk?

Despite what formula milk manufacturer's tell you, formula isn't comparable to breast milk and never will be. Breast milk is human milk designed for human babies, it is a living food with specific immune properties, capable of developing a child's immune system and protecting them against infectious diseases like meningitis, measles and chickenpox.

Formula milk cannot provide protection or mature a child's immune system. It is a static food intended for calves which has been heat treated in the process of producing the formula and so any immune cells contained within it are killed.

Until recently, all brands of formula also did not contain any long chain polyunsaturated fatty acids, which doctors now say are vital for human brain development.

Could this be the reason why there are so many children with allergies, cancers and learning disabilities? Now, staggeringly high proportions of the western world are bottle feeding their babies and the rates of learning disability seem to be increasing in proportion to that.

Immune Boosting Breast Milk

Did you know that Albert Sabin, inventor of the oral polio vaccine, did the first study on the anti-polio properties of breast milk? He infected mice with polio and then took breast milk from 71 American women and fed it to the mice. The breast milk had an 84% success rate at neutralising polio. (Albert Sabin and Howard Fieldsteel, 'Anti-poliomyelitic Activity of Human and Bovine Colostrum and Milk', Journal of Pediatrics, 29 (1962).

According to the journal of epidemiology, breast milk protects against HIB for up to 10 years after you have stopped breast feeding.

'For each week of breast feeding, the protection improved.' (Journal of Epidemiology, 1997, 26: 443-450).

Tropical Pediatrics also found significant amounts of antibodies in breast milk to whooping cough, HIB, strep B infection and meningitis.

'Samples may indicate a protective role for breast milk against the four infections of early childhood.' Tropical Pediatrics, 1989, 4: 226-232.

Donating Your Breast Milk

Premature infants are at even greater need for breast milk, given their immaturity, increased risk of infections and the invasive medical procedures they will need to undergo in the neonatal intensive care unit. Sadly, many of these babies are never breast fed as they are too weak to suckle and their mother's milk dries up or dwindles after a few weeks of pumping.

If you are breast feeding your baby, aged less than six months, and you want to give the ultimate gift of life this Christmas, why not donate some of your milk to a human milk bank?

To be a milk donor you must not abuse illegal drugs, drink lots of tea and coffee, have rubella or been vaccinated recently and you will need to undergo tests to ensure you are free of HIV and other infectious diseases.

For more details, contact:

British Columbia Women's Milk Bank

C and W Lactation Services

4500 Oak Street

IU 30

Vancouver

BC V6H 3N1

Phone: (604) 875 2282.